Pity and All Its Pains
by Immortal x Snow
Summary: Iceland is left alone to cope with the devastating Laki eruption while Denmark and Norway are fighting. When they find out? They rush to his side to take care of him. But Norway can't shake his sense that something is deeply wrong, and he can't ignore that look in Denmark's eyes. Some fluff, some angst, no pairings.


De-anoning from the kink meme! The original request was young!Iceland trying to cope with the Laki eruption in 1783-1784 while Norway and Denmark are fighting (no, the breakup of Denmark-Norway didn't happen until 1814, but OP imagined that they might have started fighting around now).

I imagine Iceland isn't terribly little here, but he's still just a kid. I imagine his big growth spurt would have come during the rise of Icelandic nationalism in the 19th century and his independence in the 1900s.

* * *

It's quiet in the room but loud in his head: he can hear the rumblings of his land in his brittle bones, beneath his ashen skin. Another bead of sweat rolls down the back of his neck, but the cool moisture hardly alleviates the fire he feels inching closer and closer, an inexorable fate.

He would kill for a drink of water right now.

He drifts in and out of sleep, slipping into imaginary lava flows one moment and waking to real ones burning in his spine the next. The wind begins to howl. He kicks this way and that, flailing his bony arms around, trying to free himself from his smothering sweat-soaked blankets, but he's too weak to escape.

He wonders how many days have gone past now—how many nights, how many weeks, how many months. He feels as though he's been in bed without food, without water, for years now, but feverish dreams and ash-clouded skies are poor clocks.

He folds his hands, chipped yellow fingernails meeting knotted knuckles, and tries to pray. The _eldmessa_ saved Kirkjubæjarklaustur; maybe he can muster an Our Father. He can't make it past the first three words: his head swims too much and the asthmatic voices of his people echoing in his mind are too loud for him to think.

He smiles in spite of himself. He's not sure what he's waiting for anymore, or even if he is waiting. Waiting means he expects something to change, and right now, it feels as though everything will remain the same, neither improving nor worsening.

He is Iceland.

He is dying.

* * *

He's fighting with Denmark again and nothing is new.

Norway sits on a bench beside a maroon gabled customs house on the quay. The summer air is thick with the smell of the fish the merchants are selling and the salt dripping off the sailors' sweaty bodies and wet hair. His stockinged feet are unusually warm in his polished black boots. He adjusts his hair clip a little.

Bergen is a fragmented city on the water, surrounded by mountains reaching into the sky and ships sailing across the world and back. Back into his land, his city, bringing merchandise to his port, wealth to his people. Norway is half-surprised Denmark hasn't tried to find some way to redirect the cash pipeline to himself. Yet.

All for the common good of the union, he'd say, as he always does. A strong capital makes a strong country. And if Norway points out that Denmark made Copenhagen their capital on purpose, Denmark gets this look in his eyes and shrugs his friend off.

Bergen has as much money as Copenhagen and easily as many people. Norway knows this, but he bites his tongue.

He prefers not to remember the hungry fires and the festering plague.

So he crosses his arms and leans back into the bench by the harbor, wipes away a droplet of sweat crawling down his forehead, and closes his eyes. It's a toss-up whether he'll dream of freedom or the slow ravaging of Copenhagen.

Maybe they mean the same thing.

He tries to push the thought out of his mind.

* * *

The cloud covers the city overnight. When Norway wanders back to the harbor in the morning, ignoring the stack of papers from Denmark on his desk, he finds all the tall, proud merchant ships anchored, empty, at the port. The sun casts a faint rusty glow through the haze on the calm surface of the sea. The cheerful chatter of couples gazing in shop windows and rough barking of commands from captains is gone.

Instead, Norway hears deep guttural coughs in the streets and confused gasps from second-story windows.

The air is heavy, hot and dry. Norway can hardly stand to breathe it in. He places a hand over his mouth and nose, but he can't keep himself from coughing every few moments.

He squints. He can only see a few meters into the distance, but his imagination has overtaken his sight all in a rush.

He doesn't run often, but he sets off away the harbor and back home at a good clip, hand still over his mouth and lungs beginning to burn.

* * *

His tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth. Everything tastes like ash and sulfur and bile. Iceland tries to suck on his fingers, but he has no saliva left in his mouth.

Maybe he should try to get that glass of water. Maybe walking won't be so bad.

He should be used to this. He's lived his whole life with volcanoes. An eruption shouldn't be enough to keep him down.

Iceland stares at his checkered red quilt. The crimson squares look like the lava flows he feels oozing across his land, swallowing up the livestock and starving his people. He can only imagine the effects the eruption must be having on the other nations. He can hear them storming toward him now, screaming about the burning in their mouths and the smell of death in their fields, about the famines, the fears, about the full cemeteries and the poisonous frost. He can see Sweden demanding Denmark and Norway take responsibility for the eruption—Iceland is their colony, after all, and they've got to do something now that half of Europe is starving and the peasants are trying to revolt and do they want a war because who knows what the hell England is going to do now that America's revolution has succeeded and his people are dying because of poison smoke from thousands of kilometers away—

He pulls his fingers out of his mouth.

Twin red teeth marks mar both of his knuckles.

* * *

"How do you know it's Iceland?"

Norway takes a deep breath and exhales with a sharp sigh.

"You tell me what else it could be."

Denmark plucks at the hem of his tattered left glove. Norway's noticed that he's developed a lot of nervous tics since the first fires.

It isn't like him to be so on-edge. They aren't at war. Not now, anyway. The last time they boarded their warships was in Scania 100 years ago, and that hadn't even been a major conflict. No, they hadn't gotten the Scanian territories back. No, Sweden's ego hadn't been quite as devastated as Denmark had hoped. Still, Norway hardly blinks when he remembers the war now.

He does clench his jaw the slightest bit when he remembers that his constant fights with Denmark probably aren't talking him down very efficiently.

"If you're going, I'm coming along."

"No."

"Why?"

Norway taps his foot and crosses his arms, frowns and looks over his shoulder. Even inside, the air is warm and smothering, almost like ashy syrup. He's sure his lungs are coated with the stuff now.

"C'mon, Norway. You gotta talk to me. You don't talk to me anymore."

He doesn't have to talk to anyone.

"Please, Nor."

Especially someone who keeps him down on purpose.

"He's our colony, you know. Yours and mine. Ours."

Norway thinks about how to reply. Nothing good comes to mind immediately, so he keeps walking away, his shoes clacking on the tile floor. The sound echoes in the silence between Denmark's pleas and his own stifled coughs.

"Look, if it's this bad here—he'll be in pretty bad shape." Norway stops and glances over his shoulder at Denmark, who's biting his chapped bottom lip. He coughs once, twice, before starting again: "He'll need a lot of looking after, and I don't want you to have to take care of him alone there. It'll be dangerous and you're—well, you're—"

"Weak?"

"I mean—think about it like this, Norway—"

"You're not in the best shape yourself, you know."

"We've done a lot in Copenhagen. You should come see for yourself how much effort I've put in—we've been working double time since the fire to get everything twice as good as it was before." Denmark looks at his gloves again. "Y'know. Since it's our capital."

Norway scratches his knuckle. He's not sure if he wants an "our" anymore. Hell, he's not even sure he wanted an "our" in the first place.

All the same, he knows every moment he spends fighting with Denmark is a moment with Iceland wasted. He needs to hurry. Sharp pains shoot up his fingers and his stomach turns a little at the thought of the small country on the other side of the sea. He's just a child. He still lets Norway tuck him in at night, and he lets Norway hold his hand when they go for walks on the shore in the summer.

He can't just leave him there.

He's about to grumble at Denmark to go away and let him take care of Iceland alone—someone has to stay back and govern, and it might as well be him, since he's guarded his strength and superiority throughout the union as carefully as a bird watching its nest—when he sees that look in his eyes again. The look that usually makes him roll his eyes but that now makes him pause and stand still in the silence.

Denmark still hasn't forgotten those long months.

Denmark may never forget those days of holding sweaty hands and singing away fever dreams.

Norway can still hear his friend's lullabies in his ears.

For just a second, he imagines himself crying and giving in. But he doesn't like crying—it's such a bother—and if he doesn't do something, Denmark's going to fizzle into a puddle of tears and make a mess of himself and the whole matter, and he's got bigger things to worry about, like his baby brother and volcanoes and fuck it all, fine, Denmark can come if he wants, but he'd better not make a big mess of everything as he always does, okay?

* * *

Iceland can't remember the feeling of cold water on his tongue anymore, nor the feeling of comfort and cool sleep and sweet dreams that keep him safe as he dozes late into the summer morning. He's long since stopped missing Norway and Denmark. Missing is a feeling, and his mind and heart are too heavy, too dull, to feel.

He breathes hot smoke and stinging ash. Sometimes he thinks he's just crawled on the beach after a swim in the hot springs, but attempts to bury his hands in the warm sand remind him that he's still stuck in bed, slick with sweat and wrapped in disheveled sheets and burning deep in his bones.

He dozes a little, as much as he can. He dreams of winter, of perfect snowflakes falling and sticking, one by one, to his window. He dreams of holding Norway's hand outside and sticking his tongue out to catch the falling crystals on his tongue. He blinks and then there are orange-yellow fireworks in the sky and ash, not snow, falling in his mouth. The earth wobbles and sinks beneath him, and he awakes to his bedroom door squealing on its hinges and someone sitting down on his bed beside him.

Rough, strong hands cup his face and brush his forehead and cheeks. Someone whispers his name in a smooth but shaking voice.

"Ice, hey, Ice."

An arm supports his shoulders and helps him sit upright. And then—water. Sweet, cold water. He drinks so much so fast that he almost chokes. Someone rubs his back as he coughs and hacks up ash and phlegm.

Then he is breathing again. He holds out his arms and whines for more water. Within moments he has a second glass held to his lips, and he slurps down every last drop. Someone picks him up, then, and a few blinks later, he is in Denmark's arms.

"Heya, Icey," Denmark says with a smile. "Sh, just be quiet. Norway's here, too. He's gonna remake your bed and then we're gonna get you settled again, okay?"

Iceland doesn't understand, but he nuzzles his head into Denmark's shoulder and clings to his shirt anyway. His body aches, but Denmark's large hands rubbing his back take the edge off the pain, and his thick arms are cool against Iceland's burning skin.

"I'll take him now."

Norway's smooth voice drifts into Iceland's mind, and then his arms are pulling him away from Denmark and into his chest. He smiles and wipes sweaty grey curls away from Iceland's forehead, then sets him down on his bed, on a blue blanket instead of a red checkered one. Norway wrings out a wet cloth and brushes it against Iceland's arm.

When he gasps at the cold water running down his skin, something flickers in Norway's eyes.

"Does that hurt?"

Iceland shakes his head. Denmark kneels down beside him, puts a hand on his head.

"Norway's just going to get you cooled off, okay, little guy?"

Iceland nods. Norway gently strokes his burning skin with the soft cloth, and slowly, slowly, Iceland begins to fall asleep, limp against Denmark's arm keeping him upright. But he wakes up in time to ask Norway to tuck him in.

Norway chuckles, a faint smile softening his face, and obliges, pulling the thin blue blanket up to Iceland's chin and giving him a little kiss on the forehead. Iceland reaches for his hand, his bony fingers wrapping around Norway's thumb, and asks him if he'll stay.

"Yes," Norway says as he sits down on Iceland's bed, Denmark kneeling beside him. He doesn't pry Iceland's fingers off his hand, and Iceland falls asleep to the soft sound of Norway's humming and the feel of his large hand cupping Iceland's small one.

* * *

When Denmark starts crying, Norway sighs and sits down outside Iceland's bedroom door next to him, not sure what he should say. He knows what he wants to say—be quiet, you're going to wake him up, he'll be fine, he's technically my colony and not yours—but none of his snark moves past his imagination into words. He knows why Denmark is crying, and it's not because of Iceland. Mostly.

The wind howls outside. Rain begins to pelt the window, but Norway knows the insistent pitter-patter against the glass is not water but acid. Each breath fills his lungs with the sulfurous mixture of ash and smoke that has replaced seemingly all the air in the land. If it all feels like a bad dream to him, he can only imagine how his little brother feels. The thought makes him want to hold Iceland close and carry him away to safety—out of the country, across the sea. Denmark said that was their best option for taking care of the little nation.

But Norway doesn't know where safety is anymore. Bergen is probably smothered in sulfur and blanketed in ashy frost by now, and Copenhagen can't be better. He wonders how much ash the volcano has belched out. The memory of Iceland limp in Denmark's arms and choking from greedily gulping down all the water he can assures him that probably most of Europe will see at least a little acid rain before the end of the year.

Denmark coughs. Norway hands him a glass of water.

"I'm sorry, Norway."

"I know."

The last drop of water rolls down the side of the glass onto Denmark's lower lip, where it hangs for a moment before slipping down his chin and falling onto the floor.

"He just looks so much like you back when—"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You never want to talk about anything." Denmark slams the glass onto the ground. Norway raises an eyebrow when it doesn't shatter. "What the hell have I done wrong? You're my best friend. I've taken care of you. We've worked together. We've kicked Sweden's ass and gotten super rich. Sure, Copenhagen's had a couple of fires here and there, and the harvest isn't always what we'd like it to be, but it's been good. What do you want, Norway? What more can you want?"

Denmark grits his teeth as another tear falls. Norway draws his knees up to his chest, his bare feet stinging from rubbing against the harsh carpet. Denmark, as usual, has gotten his facts wrong: they haven't exactly been kicking Swedish ass lately, and they aren't the wealthiest nations in the world. Of course, they aren't poor, either, and most other nations would be happy in his position. Content, at least. Living a life of a status quo that's good enough, and maybe even better than what they could've hoped for.

Norway has never taken much time to pause and wonder if he's all that happy, though his frequent fights with Denmark don't exactly seem to indicate perfect bliss. He knows that much, if only subconsciously.

Denmark is his friend. He's always been there. He was there for the early Viking days, for the Kalmar Union and its dissolution, for all the wars they'd fought and all the famines they'd suffered and yes, he'd been there in the 14th century and again 100 years ago when the plague had killed half of Norway's people and torn his land to pieces. He'd been there for every burning fever spike and every clear and cool morning, for every moment they feared the worst and every one of Norway's shaky first steps after healing. He's always been there.

But the pity has never left his eyes.

And Norway wants to be free from that pity, from that forced weakness and from everything it stands for and from everything it's done to him.

He just doesn't know how to break free. Especially when doing so would break Denmark's heart every bit as much as watching him almost die during the plague did.

And so he stands up, putting a hand on Denmark's shoulder, and opens the door to Iceland's room to check on him. He's stirring in his sleep, probably about to wake up and definitely ready for more water.

Norway glances down at Denmark.

"I want him to be okay," Norway says.

And so Denmark picks up the glass of water and goes to refill it while Norway kneels down beside Iceland's bed, ready to give him whatever he needs. When the child awakens, Norway and Denmark are both there beside him, Denmark smiling despite the tears still in his eyes and Norway stroking his little bony knuckles with one finger.

They take care of him.

They give him as much water as he asks for and feed him when his stomach has settled enough. They sit with him whenever his fever spikes during the night and whenever it breaks in the morning. Denmark holds him when he's in pain, and Norway tucks him in and hums him to sleep. When Iceland is settled and snug in his bed and in his dreams, Norway and Denmark sleep beside each other on the floor.

Denmark snores, splayed out with one arm on Norway's stomach. Norway is too deep in thought to sleep well.

Iceland is all that matters right now.

But right now will pass by faster than he realizes, and Norway will have to do something soon.

And yet right now—right now, with Iceland beginning to recover and Denmark grumbling in his sleep—he's just content enough to last another day.

* * *

Historical Notes:

The Laki eruption caused a ton of devastation around Europe and even in Africa; historians believed the eruption was responsible not only for the conditions that set off the French Revolution, but also for severe famines as far as Egypt. North America, too, was not spared from the ash clouds from the volcano. It's estimated that the eruption killed over six million people worldwide.

The _eldmessa_ was a sermon delivered by Jón Steingrímsson of Kirkjubæjarklaustur that is believed to have stopped the lava flow headed for the town, saving the villagers from certain death.

The Black Death devastated Norway in the 14th century, killing up to half of its population, if not more (also, it came to Bergen in a rather freaky way—on a ship full of dead people). It again ravaged Oslo in the mid-17th century. Weakened, Norway entered into a union with Denmark, with the capital in Copenhagen (which suffered the loss of a third of its population to plague in 1711, along with an enormous fire in 1728). Denmark remained the stronger of the two nations, allowing it to wrest Norway's medieval dependencies of Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland away in the Treaty of Kiel, which broke up the union. Of course, Norway wasn't as weak as might be believed from reading this fic: Bergen remained a very wealthy city.


End file.
